Climate change hits India’s artisans with a double whammy: Extreme heat makes pollution even more dangerous
Air pollution on top of extreme summer heat is causing lung problems globally; the situation is dire in India for makers of traditional musical instruments, who work with wood fires.
Hariram Bopa has no choice but to breathe in wood smoke.
In his one-room house in Jaisalmer city in Rajasthan, India, he earns his living making ravanhattas, traditional wooden bowed string instruments considered the forerunner of the violin. He uses the fire to heat iron rods for drilling holes in the wood, and the smoke evokes a bittersweet memory of his father, Ugmaram, also a renowned ravanhatta maker.
"Someday," his father used to say, "this smoke will kill all of us."
Ugmaram Bopa died 15 years ago of chronic asthma. Now Hariram, 42, has started suffering from the condition.
"I never paid attention to this when I was young," Hariram Bopa said. "As I grow older, I can see its effects."
Wood fires generate hazardous pollutants like particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide.
Adding insult to injury, climate change is worsening air pollution around the world, especially as global warming has brought a huge increase in wildfires in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Russia, and elsewhere. Lung damage is up sharply, especially in countries like India where extreme heat and pollution are both mounting, according to a growing body of research.
Though air pollutants from burning firewood are a direct threat to instrument makers in India, climate-change-induced rising temperatures add to the problems, as they're exposed to more ozone and secondary pollutants.
"Earlier, an artist suffered from asthma only after the age of 65, but now it has become common even at 35," Bopa explains. "Several generations of artists have made ravanhattas before me and they didn't have access to clean fuel either, but none experienced such severe problems."
Air pollution is a global threat
Across the Pacific Ocean in California, short-term exposure to both an air pollutant called PM2.5 and extreme heat increased the risk of death, according to a paper published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine in 2022. And simultaneous exposure to extreme heat and pollutants had an effect surpassing the sum of individual effects. PM2.5 is particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers that enters deep into the lungs, causing a variety of health problems.
"The excess mortality risk associated with coexposure to extreme heat and PM2.5 was approximately three times larger than the estimated effect of exposure to either extreme heat or PM2.5 alone," said the paper's lead author, Mostafijur Rahman, assistant professor at the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
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Air pollution and extreme heat result in oxidative stress, in which a buildup of harmful molecules called reactive oxygen species overwhelm the body's ability to neutralize them.
"Antioxidants help clean up these molecules, but particulate air pollution and heat disrupt this balance," Rahman explained.
In addition to the chronic effects, heat and air pollution can contribute to heart attacks and strokes.
The problem is already one of the biggest threats to human health in India, where PM2.5 pollution has shaved an estimated 5.3 years from average life expectancy.
"On the days of exposure to both extreme heat and extreme air pollution, we observed an increase in cardiovascular deaths by almost 40%," says Dr. Rob McConnell, a professor at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California and a co-author of the 2022 paper.
Extreme heat makes air pollution worse
"During high temperatures and high solar radiation, the volatile organic compounds released from soil, vegetation, and industries combine with nitrogen oxides released mainly from transportation sector to form a secondary air pollutant ozone, which further reacts in the atmosphere to form secondary particulate matter," said Nidhi Singh, a postdoctoral researcher at IUF- Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine, Germany. Higher temperatures also prompt the formation of more ozone and secondary organic aerosols that lead to the formation of more particulate matter, creating a vicious cycle.
During extreme heat, the human body tries to cool itself by taking faster and deeper breaths. With an increased ventilation rate, the body inhales more air pollutants while the effort to cool down hinders the body's ability to detoxify harmful chemicals, compounding the risk.
Ozone exposure can lead to coughing, shortness of breath, respiratory infections, asthma attacks, and pulmonary inflammation. In addition to respiratory illnesses, long-term effects can include damage to the nervous system and reproductive system, cancer, and metabolic disorders.
To understand the interaction between air pollution and summer heat, researchers in an April 2023 paper analyzed data from 482 locations across 24 countries. Published in Environment International, they found that several air pollutants significantly increased the danger of heat, increasing mortality from cardiovascular and respiratory problems.
Endangered legacy
In Manakapur village of Southern India's Karnataka state, 66-year-old Narayan Desai heats three 17-centimeter iron rods in firewood for two hours daily to make another traditional instrument, the shehnai, a clarinet with double reed at one end and a flaring metal bell at the other. He can't afford a cleaner energy source to practice the disappearing art of handcrafting the centuries-old wooden instrument popularized globally by the late Ustad Bismillah Khan.
"Working with iron rods was never easy as it caused me a lot of third-degree burns in the past, but I never knew smoke would someday take away the art from me," says Desai, who takes long pauses for breath when he speaks. He is no longer able to muster the breath to play the instruments he makes. "I tried playing it in 2022 but collapsed as my lungs have become severely weak," he says.
In 2021, Desai suffered a heart attack, and the doctor advised him to stop doing this work. He kept going, and a year later, he started suffering from high blood pressure. None of his family members stay in the house when he heats these rods.
"I find it difficult to breathe," says his wife, Sushila, who is in her 40s.
Meanwhile, slow demand for his instruments and poor pay have hurt Bopa, who takes 15 days to hand make a ravanhatta, for which he gets 3,000-5,000 Indian rupees ($35-47).
"How will I afford any clean source of energy when no one wants to pay a good price for a musical instrument?" he asks.
In Jaisalmer, artists make the ravanhattas from March to June, when the region sees a steep decline in tourism due to the scorching summers.
"Since the past three years, the heat here has become unbearable," says Bopa, who has handmade over a thousand ravanhattas, which tourists from France, Germany, and many European countries buy.
Yet no one has come to him to learn how to make this instrument. Today, only a handful of artists left in Jaisalmer make ravanhattas. His children and neighbors often see him experiencing shortness of breath, coughing, and struggling with eyesight.
"The younger generation doesn't want to enter this line of work because of the health risks," he says.
Dinkar Aiwale, a flute maker from Maharashtra's Kodoli village, died in 2021 from fibrosis, which occurs when lung tissues are damaged and scarred and leads to shortness of breath.
Aiwale spent over 150,000 hours crafting the finest flutes.
In his later years, he experienced breathlessness while playing the flute, a warning sign of something dangerous, but he wouldn't stop.
"More than my health, I am worried that this art will die with me, and I don't want that to happen," he told me in 2019.
Meager solutions
Studies from World Weather Attribution have shown that human-induced climate change made the heat waves in South Asia in 2022 and 2023 hotter and 30 times more likely.
A study published in the British Medical Journal found that every year, more than 2 million people in India die from air pollution, and extreme heat keeps making matters worse.
Singh said the air quality monitoring system must be strengthened and expanded beyond cities. She also suggests early warning alerts about extreme weather events for people to take precautions during this time and routine health checkups to identify vulnerable populations. Ensuring timely access to needed medication will be crucial.
"But the major step has to come from the government. They have to come up with strong regulations to curb high emissions and temperature," she says.
According to the State of Global Air Report 2024, close to 50% of all ozone-related deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, were reported in India, followed by China and Bangladesh.
In addition to asthma, Bopa now shows symptoms of COPD. Yet he keeps burning wood fires and making instruments.
"I know this art will kill me someday," he says. "But even if I quit making instruments, I will die of hunger. There's no solution."